Re: USB Key light on/off state depending on mount

From: Robert Hancock
Date: Fri Aug 24 2007 - 19:20:51 EST


Casey Dahlin wrote:
Most USB keys nowadays have a small LED somewhere inside of them that lights up when they are plugged in. On a windows box, the key is lit up whenever it is mounted, and as soon as it is unmounted it turns off, giving a handy physical indicator that the key is safe to remove. On linux, the light is simply on whenever the key is plugged in.

Should linux toggle the light depending on mount state? Is it as trivial as it seems or does this reflect some larger issue?

I think that Windows turns off power to the port when you do the "safely remove hardware" on it, or something like that. Mount/unmount doesn't really indicate whether the device is in use in Linux, though, since it can still be potentially accessed even when the device isn't mounted.

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Robert Hancock Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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